Even though he might think otherwise, Kevin Miller has a very important job at the Roanoke Times. The NYU alumnus from New Jersey brings the people of Southwest Virginia information that now affects their everyday lives. The impact of Virginia Tech is so large, that the Roanoke Times has a reporter who covers just the school. I sat down with Miller to hear about what it is like to report on the university, especially during a time of tight budgets and football mania.

Q: What brought you to Roanoke?
A: My first job out of college was for a small daily newspaper in Maryland. I worked there for about three years and the corporation that owns that paper also owns the Roanoke paper so I was transferring to a bigger paper.

Q: Where you covering higher education in Maryland?
A: No, I was studying state government, agriculture and environmental issues. I covered a few colleges that were really small private school. The position was called state government and agriculture

Q: How long have you been writing?
A: About eight years.

Q: I notice you have done political writing, do you cover other issues for the Roanoke Times?
A: The last four years they have sent me to Richmond to help cover so Virginia General Assembly when they are in session, which is generally from January to March. I live in Richmond during those two months and work full time helping our other state government reporter cover the legislature. If something else comes up, if someone is out of the office, they may ask me to do something. We all occasionally get called to do spot news, but it is pretty rare.

Q: As higher education reporter in the New River Valley do you just cover Tech or do you cover Radford and other schools as well?
A: Up until a couple months ago I covered Tech, Radford and New River Community College and at state wide, higher education type of trends. They recently changed things and our office so I pretty much exclusively cover Virginia Tech now and state wide higher education trends. One of the other reporters is now covering Radford University. He also covers more student life issues he did a story the other day about students coming back to school. Things like that he would do and I cover more administration and policy.

Q: How long have you been writing for the Roanoke Times?
A: Five years.

Q: And in those five years do you notice a dramatic change in the way the University affects the whole New River Valley and its surrounding areas?
A: I certainly have a much better understanding now about how the university fits into the whole regional economy. I don’t know if there has been a dramatic shift since I have been here because when I joined here the school was about the same size. They have increased the amount of research they do. I don’t think the university has changed its affect since I have been here, I have just realized how important Virginia Tech is just for the whole economy here in Blacksburg, New River Valley, and southwest Virginia. I guess one thing that has happened since I have been here it seems like Virginia Tech has reached out more in other parts of the state in trying to be more global in its research programs. They have a school down in Danville that they are working with to start this research institute. It is mostly research labs, but it is also graduate student programs and it is intended to try to get the Danville economy back on its feet.

Q: Is it difficult to cover education in an area, during a time, where people are so crazy about Virginia Tech Football?
A: Yeah, we have several reporters where their whole job is to cover football so I certainly don’t have to do that specifically, but I kind of get roped in to writing about football issues from time to time like tickets and game day. I wrote a story about the south end zone on the first day so I do write about some of the sports and how it ties into the students and what is going on here on campus. It is kind of funny whenever I talk to people and they ask me what I do and I say I am a reporter and a write about Virginia Tech. Almost always the first response I get is, “You write about the Hokies?” I always say, “No I write about the other side of the University, the academics, the administration, everything else that goes on.”

Q: You don’t usually see students walking around campus reading the Roanoke Times. When you write your stories, what type of audience are you writing for?
A: It depends on the story. Sometimes I am writing a story and I realize that it is going to appeal mostly to the faculty and people who work at tech and live in Blacksburg. Most of the times I am just trying to write about the people in Roanoke and the people who may have interest in Tech, just kind of the general population. I realize that most Tech students aren’t going around picking up the Roanoke Times. If they read the paper they read the Collegiate Times or even their home town paper. I generally feel I am writing for the people who live here year round, but at the same time we are always trying to increase our readership around campus, so there are times when I write stories that are exclusively for students.

Q: What is on that audience’s mind? What do you think is the main issue people are concerned with about Virginia Tech right now?
A: Football, football is always the biggest thing. I think just the occurring issues of the budget, tuition has gone up pretty dramatically and it will keep on going up the next couple of years. Tuition seems to be one of the biggest issues, other than that, anything that ties to the economy. Blacksburg is trying to build its high-tech sector so a lot of the research that happens here at Tech is probably an interest to those people in the high-tech job market.

Q: What were your thoughts on the Board of Visitors meeting that just recently happened?
A: There weren’t too many huge issues. I ended up writing about engineering and whether it was getting money. That is pretty much the only thing I wrote about, but there was a lot of talk about diversity at the meeting. That is probably something that I will come back to and use that information for a later story.

Q: Tech is known for not having a diverse student body. Among the incoming freshmen class, there were a higher number of minority students enrolled, but a lower number of minority applicants. What do you think the university could do to encourage more minorities to apply?
A: It is not my job to tell the University what to do, but from what I hear other people saying and what Tech is trying to do is they need to change the image of Virginia Tech. People still regard it as a white, male school. I think they need to go out there and change that reputation a little bit and one way to do that is get out there in areas of the state where there are major populations of minorities. What they said they were going to do more like college fairs to get involved with some of those programs out there that are trying to channel kids to become prepared for college. Sounds like they are trying to get the help of Alumni more and recent graduates to go out to the high schools and say, Blacksburg is a cool place to live and Virginia Tech is a good school. Those are some of the good things I have been hearing. People might be discouraged to come here because there is not a large minority population. You have to get a critical mass of people in order for more people to come.

Q: What is the university doing to lower its ranking as a research school and get into the top 30?
A: It seems what the university is saying is yes, they have fallen from 52 to 55, but because of the reports that it is based on are two years old, that was right in the middle of budget cuts. The report that they were basing it on was the National Science Foundation report and the use numbers from the physical year, 2003. What they are saying is they think since then that have made a lot of progress, so two years from now you are hopefully going to see Tech head in the other direction, back into the top 50 and climbing up through the 40s. What they’re doing is trying to do a lot of more interdisciplinary research which is research that combines the departments. They are trying to build teams of research.

Q: Do you think the balance of budget for departments is good in implementing that plan and fair for the students at the same time?
A: That is a big issue with the university and we keep on hearing that. I think university administration has acknowledged that yes, they are trying to increase their research program so that means they are going to focus on their programs where there are strong research programs like Engineering. But what the administration has always told me is that we can’t just focus on that because if we focus on that the other part of the university like the Liberal Arts, Spanish, English things like that is going to deteriorate and you can’t have a world class university, as they say, if you have a college that is great in Engineering and bad at everything else. The administration has said that they are trying very hard to spread the money out equally to support the research programs that they want to grow and also make sure that these other departments are receiving enough money. In order for Virginia Tech to be an internationally known university, they really have to get into this research. Whether they have a proper balance or not I think that is something that is going to be argued for a long time?

Q: What makes Virginia Tech more or less challenging to report about than other schools in Virginia?
A: The size, there is so much stuff going on that I can only focus on. What I report about is a small percent of what happens around campus. That means a lot of times I will purposely ignore what is going on with the students, things that are certainly interesting. I approach this job as not necessarily writing for students, but writing for the whole community so I focus more on the issues that I think are more important to a broader readership. At the same time, I have my choice to write about what I want to cover, which is nice.

Q: Would you ever consider covering higher education elsewhere? Even out of the state?
A: Yeah, I have thought that my next job, if I could, I would like to possibly write about science, which is why I like this job because I get to write about research. Maybe having this job at a larger paper.


Q: How do you think your job differs from a higher education writer in area that is not so much of a college town?
A: If I was writing about higher education in Boston it would probably be completely different. I would have more variety of schools to write about, that means I would have more things to write about, but I am sure I would still be writing about economic trends and how the universities affect more of the local community. I think if I was working in a town that had multiple university I would be doing a lot more trend reporting.

Q: How much longer do you see yourself writing about this subject?
A: It depends. If there is a job out there that I thought I was qualified for and am covering higher education I would certainly look at it. Every time there is a higher education job and there is not many I think that it could be interesting. I really like science and I part of me would like to move towards an environmental reporter or a science reporter, but if I want to that seriously I would have to go back to school because a lot of science reporters out there have a second degree in science and I don’t so I would have to do that.